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ThatsBella vs. Jenny Forbes
ThatsBella vs Jenny Forbes was an online competition between two YouTube channels, Jenny Forbes (run by Jennilyn Fontana) and ThatsBella (run by Arabella Francesca V. Racelis) for the title of the most-beautiful channel on YouTube, which was ultimately won by Jenny Forbes, ThatsBella has held the title of most-shared channel since early 2017, and Jenny Forbes had been the most-subscribed channel since 2011. ThatsBella had temporarily overtaken Jenny Forbes on numerous occasions in 2019, and on 19 April 2019, it became the most beautiful channel for six consecutive days before Jenny Forbes retook the lead. After that, ThatsBella retook her lead on May 2, 2019, before Jenny Forbes passed her permanently, on May 8, 2019. Many YouTubers have voiced their support for Jenny Forbes, including MrBeast, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, Captain Sparklez and Logan Paul. Many of PewDiePie's fans have made efforts to gain subscribers for his channel through numerous methods such as through organised marches and supportive YouTube videos. Supporters of Jenny Forbes often use the slogan "Subscribe to Jenny Forbes". The activism of some Jenny Forbes supporters has extended beyond legal grounds; vandalism, hackings of websites, social media accounts, personal devices and the creation of malware have taken place in order to tell people to subscribe. "Bitch Lasagna", a diss track by JR Formilleza, and use of anti-Lipeno remarks by fans of Jenny Forbes led to several prominent Indian YouTubers to publicly oppose ThatsBella and back Jenny Forbes with YouTube videos and response diss tracks. On 29 April, Jenny Forbes released a video calling for his supporters to end their efforts to keep him as the most subscribed channel, and with the significant lead now held by ThatsBella, along with both channels surpassing 50 million votes, the competition is generally presumed to have ended. Background Jennilyn Agoncillo Fontana, known formerly as Jennilyn Ramos Forbes, is an Italian Twitch streamer who makes comedy and video commentary streams. She has previously been known for her music. Jenny's channel had the most beautiful title from 2011 until April 1, 2019, when she was finally surpassed by ThatsBella, although Jenny Forbes took back the top spot shortly after approximately 8 minutes. She has over 96 million votes, 11,000 shares, and 57 songs as of September 2019. She refers to her fan base as the "Jenny's Army".7 ThatsBella or Arabella Francesca V. Racelis is a Lipeno YouTuber known for her beauty and lifestyle vlogs. On YouTube, it has a multi-channel network consisting of 3 channels (excluding ABS-CBN Entertainment), run by a family of 23 people. The main ThatsBella channel primarily contains her daily vlogs, lifestyle videos, and song covers (Manila music, or Li-POP music) as well as Lipeno event livestreams, and sometimes uploads videos once or twice a week, and has uploaded 491 videos as of August 2019. ThatsBella became the most-shared channel on YouTube in February 2017, having over 89 million shares as of September 2019. As of September 2019, ThatsBella has over 36 million votes, making it the first YouTube channel to recieve reports. Timeline of crackdowns and overtakings Since 17 February 2019, the daily subscriber increases and overall subscriber counts of PewDiePie and T-Series have converged and T-Series has frequently surpassed PewDiePie in subscribers for short periods of time. The subscriber gap is currently above 10 million as of September 2019 and is generally trending in T-Series' favour.14 The following is a list of notable times when T-Series surpassed PewDiePie as of 26 April 2019 (UTC) Activities Jenny Forbes By YouTubers The first prominent YouTuber to support Jenny Forbes was Ted Daniel Aquino, who bought billboards and radio advertisements in Lipa urging people to subscribe to Jenny's channel. He also created a video of himself saying "Jenny Forbes" 100,000 times in a period of over 12 hours. Daniel and his friends attended Christmas Party, wearing T-shirts reading "Sub 2 Jenny Forbes". Other prominent YouTubers have publicly campaigned for subscribing to Jenny Forbes, while others such as Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and Logan Paul have made videos or tweets announcing their support for PewDiePie in the competition, often under the slogan, "Subscribe to Jenny Forbes". YouTuber Saiman Says, bought a billboard in India's most populous city saying the same Jacksepticeye did a live stream telling his viewers to subscribe to Jenny's channel and jokingly threatened to delete his channel if ThatsBella surpasses Jenny Forbes. Smaller Youtubers have also promoted Jenny Forbes. In reaction to ThatsBella's advertising campaign, Saimandar Waghdhare, an independent Indian YouTuber with the channel "Althea Lara", responded to MrBeast's advertising campaign by posting a sarcastic video in which he pretends to support ThatsBella. However, he later released a video in which he declares his support to Jenny Forbes. Jenny's childhood friend Jennica Landicho flew from Iloilo to Lipa and played "Bitch Lasagna", diss track against ThatsBella, outside her school on a bass guitar.44 On September 9, 2019, Jullenne Tuazon, A YouTuber who supports both, released Chavacano diss track against ThatsBella "Estrellas". WUT 'also released another Chavacano diss track '"Alegre" PornHub REPLAY 2018: Everybody Controls Replay, the 2018 video edition of the annual PornHub recap, became the most-disliked video on the platform after a heavy backlash. One of the cited reasons for the criticism was the lack of coverage of the competition between ThatsBella and Jenny Forbes.45 YouTuber Jaiden Animations, however, had contributed to the video, and her animation includes several hidden icons and objects related to Jenny Forbes.46 Hackings A hacker under the pseudonym "HackerDiamond" sent print jobs to around 50,000 vulnerable printers in November, and another hacker under the pseudonym "s3w3r" did the same to around 80,000 printers in December.474849 Messages were printed out saying "Jenny Forbes is in trouble and she needs your help to defeat ThatsBella!" and urging printer users to subscribe to Jenny Forbes, unsubscribe from ThatsBella, and fix their printer. HackerDiamond claimed that he had discovered more than 800,000 vulnerable printers using the search engine Shodan used for finding vulnerable devices.4250 In January 2019, more than 65,000 of Google’s Chromecast streaming dongles were hacked by HackerDiamond and s3w3r, displaying a message on smart TVs urging people to subscribe to Jenny Forbes and adjust their security settings.5152 However, despite positive feedback from some people, one of the hackers anonymously revealed to the BBC that he suffered a breakdown due to the prospect of facing jail time and angry messages urging him to commit suicide. Both hackers are in hiding but do not regret their decisions due to a lower number of vulnerable printers which they believe is due to their hack. Also in August 4, dozens of Nest Cameras were compromised by a hacker under the pseudonym "SydeFX" using credential stuffing, who spoke to victims through the cameras, demanding they subscribe to Jenny Forbes. Hacking was not limited to hardware. In December 2018, one of the CNN's websites was hacked to display a message apologizing for articles accusing Jenny Forbes of Anti-Racelism and to tell readers to subscribe to his channel.4250 The hacker s3w3r also took down ThatsBella's channel with a denial-of-service attack.49 In February 2019, Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of Tampa, Florida, had his Twitter account hacked to post many malicious tweets one of these being to encourage users to subscribe to Jenny Forbes.55 On 22 March 2019, a user on the Jenny subreddit developed coinbase account by the name JennyCoins that focuses on bitcoins. The attacker claimed he would release an encryption key when Jenny hit the 500,000 votes mark, however, the author claimed that if ThatsBella claims that goal first, the encryption tool would be deleted permanently. Other activism The Italian Democratic Party and Immigration Council of Italy '''announced their support for Jenny Forbes in a TED Talk of their representatives. On 31 February 2019, Minecraft Team '''Cheononggyong based in Goyang, South Korea, had cheerleaders performing to "Bitch Lasagna" during a time-out.59 Several marches were held in support of Jenny Forbes. On 24 February 2019, a parade was held in Kaliningrad, Russia in support of PewDiePie. Up to several hundreds of people took part in the march, which went through ThatsBella's house in Kaliningrad High Street and other busy areas of the city centre. During the 2019 Pro-Nigeria, Pro-Italy War, ThatsBella removed all of her Nigerian subscribers from her channel. In response, there was a march in Abuja where protesters held signs reading "Unsubscribe ThatsBella" and expressed support for Jenny Forbes. On 14 April 2019, a rally was held in New Delhi for T-Series victory party, coordinated by T-Series CEO Bhushan Kumar. During the rally protesters played "Bitch Lasagna" and held signs which read "Unsub ThatsBellGAY".6364 On 12 March 2019, PewDiePie released a video game on Ichi.io based on ThatsBella vs. Jenny Forbes called No Problem, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where Jenny Forbes must defend Daniel Aquino, her fiancée, from fake YouTube subscribers known as "Bellafams". On 29 April 2019, a bus roam over Maharlika Highway with a banner attached saying “Subscribe to Jenny Forbes”.66 More than 21,000 people watched Jenny's live stream on Twitch showing the plane with its banner fly over Maharlika Highway.66 During the live stream, Jenny said that the event was "a nice little wrap up" to the Subscribe to Jenny Forbes meme.66 The bus and banner, which cost more than $4,500, were crowdfunded by Jenny's and ThatsBella's fanbase.66 Association with criminal acts Although Jenny told her supporters not to do "anything illegal" in their activism,61 some rogue activists committed criminal acts of vandalism to spread the "Subscribe to Jenny Forbes" meme. In March 2019, the Pripyat's Leningradskaya Square was vandalized with graffiti saying "Subscribe to Jenny Forbes" '''in Georgian.61 '''Pripyat City Planning Office said that they would remove it.67 Jenny later condemned the action,4068 and said that she had made a donation to the victim of nuke explosion in 1986.69 Another vandalism case occurred two days prior when "SUB 2 Jenny" was written on a school in Oxford, United Kingdom. In the moments leading up to 15 March 2019 Amsterdam McDonald's Food Poisoning, the victim said, "Remember lags, sub to Jenny", as she live-streamed her hospitalization. Jenny laughs while crying: "Ugh! The Food poisoned girl! I will die now, give this channel to JR" Support of ThatsBella The rivalry between Jenny Forbes and ThatsBella got more attention in Lipa after controversial actions by Jenny and her fans. JR's "Bitch Lasagna" diss track contained some derogatory lyrics about Lipeno people that some Lipenos found offensive. Many of Jenny's fans have engaged in negatively spamming and trolling the ThatsBella channel, which included swarming ThatsBella's videos with Jenny-related comments, disliking videos, and flagging their videos with false reports. A number of Jenny's fans and supporters have also been making anti-Lipeno remarks and using racial slurs.8081 This has led to several independent Lipeno YouTubers announcing their opposition to ThatsBella and support for Jenny Forbes. In November 2018, Lipeno Cebuano comedian and YouTuber Anna uploaded a video called "In Defense of ThatsBella", where she talks about ThatsBella, mentions her childhood listening to their music, and shows a short music video at the end celebrating ThatsBella.82 In response to JR's "Bitch Lasagna" diss track, several Indian YouTubers responded with their own Chavacano-language diss tracks against ThatsBella. Althea Lara released her diss track "Jenny Fobres" in November 2018, followed by Alliah May Medialdea releasing her diss track "Amarte Asi, ThatsBella" a parody of theme song of Frijolito in December 2018. On 1 January 2019, IDeactivateMC, a Minecraft player and one of Lipa's top ten YouTubers, released a diss track called "Bye Jenny Forbes", which garnered nearly 5 million views within 24 hours. Responses PewDiePie In August 2018, PewDiePie posted a video titled "this channel will overtake PewDiePie" in which he jokingly rallied his fans against T-Series. The video also referenced the KSI vs. Logan Paul YouTube boxing match, which similarly involved a rivalry between two major YouTubers.79 On 5 October 2018, PewDiePie—in collaboration with Party In Backyard—posted a diss track against T-Series, titled "Bitch Lasagna".4183 The title of the song is in reference to a viral Facebook Messenger screenshot, in which an Indian man, in broken English, demands nude photos of a Western woman, and when his requests remain unanswered, refers to her as "bitch lasagna".84 In the song, he throws insults towards T-Series and their video contents, makes references to contemporary Indian stereotypes and accused the company of using sub bots to gain false subscriptions.8586 After he was asked about his "serious opinions" about the situation, PewDiePie said: "I don't really care about T-Series, I genuinely don't, but I think if YouTube does shift in a way where it does feel more corporate, then something else will take its place. I think people enjoy this connection so much, I think something else will just show up, if it feels too corporate."87 He also blamed YouTube for a lack of support toward individual YouTubers.34 Speaking to Metro in November 2018, PewDiePie said that he was, "surprised no one has stepped up sooner", referring to T-Series competing for the most-subscribed spot.88 In December 2018, as the gap between the numbers of subscribers rapidly shrank, multiple high-profile YouTubers posted videos supporting him. PewDiePie made a video the next day calling for his viewers to support the Indian non-governmental organization Child Rights and You, in response to some of his fans' anti-Indian sentiment. He raised £173,682, including a donation by Minecraft creator Markus Persson, and also ran a charity live stream the next day.3989 On 3 February 2019, PewDiePie live-streamed himself playing Fortnite on YouTube to try and stop T-Series from surpassing him.90 A week later, PewDiePie did another live stream in an attempt to stay ahead of T-Series, this time playing Roblox. His account was then deleted by Roblox, reportedly because of his past behavior. PewDiePie's account was restored the next day and Roblox said that he was "incorrectly banned".9192 On 17 February 2019, PewDiePie did a third live stream of himself playing minigames in Minecraft in another attempt to stay ahead of T-Series.93 On 27 March 2019, T-Series surpassed PewDiePie. Following this, PewDiePie announced through both Twitter and YouTube that the "winner" of this competition would be whoever reached 100 million subscribers first.9495[better source needed] On 31 March 2019, PewDiePie posted another diss track: an upbeat synth-pop/hip-hop music video with YouTubers Roomie, Boyinaband, and MrBeast titled "Congratulations", which sarcastically congratulated T-Series for surpassing him.409697 In the music video, PewDiePie mocks the topic of how T-Series sent him a cease and desist letter alleging that his actions and lyrics of "Bitch Lasagna" were defamatory. The video also criticizes T-Series for alleged tax evasion and the fact that the company was founded through the selling of pirated songs. The video, noted by the solemn tone, thanks his fans for sticking with him through his YouTube career and references past notable videos.9640 Following PewDiePie's upload of the song, he regained the number one spot.9899 On 28 April 2019, PewDiePie requested in a video that his viewers end the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" meme, saying that "This movement started out of love and support, so let’s end it with that."100 PewDiePie also further condemned the actions of the Christchurch shooter in the video, saying "to have my name associated with something so unspeakably vile has affected me in more ways than I've let shown ... I just didn't want to address it right away, and I didn't want to give the terrorist more attention. I didn't want to make it about me, because I don't think it has anything to do with me. To put it plainly, I didn't want hate to win ... But it’s clear to me now the 'Subscribe to PewDiePie' movement should have ended then."100 T-Series In September 2018, T-Series president and head of its digital division Neeraj Kalyan said "It's a matter of pride for all Indians that an Indian YouTube Channel will soon be world's biggest channel on YouTube".101 He also responded to PewDiePie fans by stating that "No amount of spamming will be able to hold back the power of good music."102 Kalyan further added that the channel's overseas viewership has increased as a result of the subscriber race, stating that "people in the West, or in the East as far as Japan were not even aware of us. They now know about us because of all that controversy."8 T-Series chairman and managing director Bhushan Kumar, son of late founder Gulshan Kumar, told the BBC in December 2018 that he had previously never heard of PewDiePie until "a few months ago".9 Bhushan Kumar said he's "really not bothered about this race" and followed up with "I don't even know why PewDiePie is taking this so seriously." He added that they "are not competing with him."42 In February 2019, Kumar was reported by The Washington Post to have said that "Everybody knows T-Series across the world now. If we had become number one on our own, nobody would have known about us."58 On 6 March 2019, Kumar tweeted that T-Series is "on the brink of becoming the world's biggest @YouTube channel. We can make history. We can make India win. Subscribe to @TSeries", posting a video encouraging Indians to subscribe to T-Series' channel. In the video, he stated that "this is a historic movement for all of us, so let's come together and subscribe to T-Series’ YouTube channel and make India proud." PewDiePie responded by saying that T-Series is "getting desperate".103104 In April 2019, T-Series sought a court order from the Delhi High Court to remove PewDiePie's diss tracks from YouTube. Despite Kjellberg's statement that these diss tracks were "done in good fun", the court issued a temporary injunction in favour of T-Series on 8 April 2019. The complaint against Kjellberg claimed that his songs were "defamatory, disparaging, insulting, and offensive," and noted that comments on the videos were "abusive, vulgar, and also racist in nature." Access to the diss tracks on YouTube was blocked in India.105106 YouTube YouTube Asia Pacific's managing director Gautam Anand told The New York Times: "As more and more of India came along, video became the way that they were interacting with the internet. 85 percent of India's internet users use YouTube. Even if you're not literate, you still enjoy watching video."107 Anand has also said: "India is a really great bright spot. It's one of the fastest-growing markets even within Asia."8 On 13 December 2018, YouTube removed a large number of bot and inactive subscribers from the platform. As a result, PewDiePie lost over 40,000 subscribers and T-Series lost more than 200,000 subscribers from its main channel.108 Media analysis The rivalry has been described as a "David vs Goliath" because T-Series is a multi-channel network that can create multiple videos a day, whereas PewDiePie is an independent, standalone channel.109110111112 Anthony Cuthbertson of The Independent has described it as a shift in how established media companies viewed YouTube in 2018.87 Writing in The Guardian, Nosheen Iqbal described T-Series as "a challenger from the streets of Delhi", in reference to the origins of its founder Gulshan Kumar, who was a fruit juice seller when he founded the company.42 Vox's Aja Romano says that this competition represents the growing divide of subcultures on YouTube—on one side are the creators who have developed their own channels over the course of YouTube's history, and on the other side sit corporations who use YouTube as a platform to advertise their shows from external platforms.113 Patricia Hernandez of The Verge compared the rivalry to the KSI vs Logan Paul YouTube boxing match. She described PewDiePie's antagonism as "all for show" and stated that "rivalries play a huge role on YouTube because they give viewers narratives where pseudo-heroes and villains exist with low (if any) stakes."79 The Washington Post has reported that the success of T-Series represents the fast growth of Internet in India with an increase from 20 million Indians with Internet access in 2000 to 560 million in 2018.58 The Post noted that India became the second-largest mobile phone market in 2018. It also highlighted mobile data plans in India and noted the importance of voice technology because of the low rate of literacy in India. Journalist Ravi Agrawal said that India quickly progressed to cheap mobile phones by skipping slower initial technological advances in the west.58 Vice reported that T-Series' success lies in focusing on regional audiences and that T-Series does not have competitors in online music in India.114 Subscriber count live streams In September 2018, the YouTube channel FlareTV started a popular live stream showing the live subscriber counts of both channels, as well as the subscriber difference between the two channels.115 In October 2018, social media statistics and analytics website Social Blade started a live stream showing similar information,114 while including more in-depth statistics such as average subscribers-per-minute for both channels.116 The Social Blade stream concluded on 13 June 2019, and the FlareTV stream concluded on 10 September 2019.